24.02: The invasion reconstructed. Episode 3 – Facility No.1, or all power in Zelenskyy's bunker

"On 23 February 2022, we were sitting in the president's office. It was another 'invasion [day]'. There were several times it could have started. We sat there until about 01:00, w  aiting and waiting, and nothing happened. I was the first to give up and say that I would go home to sleep." Davyd Arakhamiia, head of the Servant of the People parliamentary faction, recounts the night before the full-scale invasion.

He lives with his wife and six children outside Kyiv. Arriving at home around two in the morning, he put his phone in sleep mode and immediately fell asleep.

"To be honest, I slept through everything then - I still sleep through air-raid warnings. And I always have my phone on do-not-disturb mode; it’s configured to decline all incoming calls the first time around, but if the caller tries again it recognises that the call is likely urgent and lets it go through. That's how Andrii Yermak (Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine – ed.) got through to me. It was about four in the morning. And he said: ‘It's started, come here.’ 

Whilst I was driving - I live near the Odesa Highway, where the village of Vita Poshtova is - I noticed a deafening explosion to my right. There was some kind of base there… I didn’t know that at the time, but I floored the pedal and jumped a red light. It usually takes me around 40 minutes to drive [to work]; that morning, I made it to the Office of the President on Bankova Street in only 15.

When I reached the office, the president was already there, [as well as] Yermak and Danilov (Oleksii Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine), I think. Sybiha (Andrii Sybiha, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine) was there, and as far as I recall Podoliak (Mykhailo Podoliak, an advisor to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine) had already arrived."

Around the same time, the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, Ruslan Stefanchuk, rushed to Bankova Street from the left bank of Kyiv.

"The president came out in a white shirt and said: ‘Well, it has begun’. And then he said the following phrase: ‘Fate has chosen us’. 

Obviously, none of those present in Zelenskyy's office at that moment had chosen this fate. The next few hours and the following days would prove to be decisive in Ukraine's modern history, the country being forced to prove that it was capable of defending its independence. 

The situation was no less challenging for Ukraine’s leaders.

Some of them would leave Kyiv within the first few hours, possessions in tow, and make a run for the country’s western regions. Others would rise to the challenge and move from the highest government offices to the so-called Facility No.1, the deepest, most cramped bomb shelter, which would practically house the country’s entire government for the first few days.

The image of the sheltered presidential post where the top officials of the Cabinet of Ministers, the President's Office and the Verkhovna Rada gathered on 24 February 2022 was a snapshot of the resistance movement as a whole - sometimes poorly organised, but always steadfast in its determination.

***

24 February 2022, 10:00.

In a room on the third floor of the President’s Office, Davyd Arakhamiia is reading messages sent by the military to the heads of parliamentary factions about new missile strikes and the current situation on the frontlines. Arakhamiia spices up the messages with foul words and occasional attempts at jokes as he reads them out loud.

All of those present are tense, but quite composed given the extraordinariness of the situation. At one point the president enters the room, along with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and the head of the Office of the President Andrii Yermak.

"The president said he knew where the strikes had been carried out, and that we were now mobilising all military and paramilitary forces - the entire defence sector, in fact - so as to build some front lines," Arakhamiia recalls. 

"Zelenskyy asked the prime minister to handle all the 'operational stuff', while he would focus on international issues. It was very important to call everyone, tell everyone, ask for help, and so on. I remember that at first, it was hard to see the president in a calm state because he was always calling someone, or someone was calling him. It was like a call centre, you know."

At one point, as Ukrainska Pravda has described in a previous episode, a meeting between Zelenskyy and the MPs was interrupted by the president’s bodyguards.

Ruslan Stefanchuk recalls:

"Some guys from the president's security service came in and said that there was enemy movement towards Bankova Street, so the president had to leave."

To give you some idea of the atmosphere of that moment, which could only be called "commotion", the Chairman of the Parliament ended up locked out of the protected shelter in which the President took refuge, despite having a designated space there, yet people who shouldn’t officially have access were able to enter.

"When the guards came in, they took me and the president... well, actually, I just followed them," Arakhamiia admits. He also described his first impressions of the presidential bunker upon descending.

"It looked like the film Stalker, to be honest. If you’ve ever visited Pervomaisk and seen the museum of rocket forces, where strategic nuclear weapons such as The Satan (a Soviet-made missile, known to the West as SS-18 – ed.) were stored, [you’ll know what I mean]. The trip to the bunker was very reminiscent of the descent to the missile silo.

Oleksandr Kubrakov, who also spent a few days in Facility No. 1 as a minister, having since been promoted to Deputy Prime Minister after the situation became more normalised, recalls his own first impression.

"Everything was like this: a long lift, then some stairs, then heavy doors. Long corridors. In general, everything is as Soviet as possible. It’s somewhere deep underground. You go down and down...

It looks like a subway. It felt like it was built around the same time [as the Kyiv Metro]. Everything is the same, that’s about it."

"[Viktor] Yanukovych used to be president, and he definitely toured this facility. When you become president, you’re shown around it. I was wondering why he didn't redecorate anything for himself," Arakhamiia says sardonically, referencing the renovations at the Presidential Office Building where even a bathhouse and gym were built during Yanukovych's tenure.

The depressing Sovietness of everyday life turned out to be something that one could get used to quite quickly. But there were also some psychological realities that loomed larger with each passing hour.

Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov recalls:

"It's psychologically taxing. The air is different. It's a closed-loop system. You breathe the air; it seems to be purified, but you’re aware that there are a lot of people sharing that same air."

Kubrakov recalls the two other things about underground life that depressed him the most.

"For me it was, of course, the lack of light. You don't know whether it's day or night outside. Underground, it's about the same state. For me, the lack of awareness of the current time… it's hard; it's not normal for a person to be in this state all the time. That’s the first thing. And the second was when the Internet went down a couple of times… the connection dropped suddenly and it was like ‘whoops, that’s it’; you don't know what's going on in the world. As for the air, we eventually resorted to venturing outside to get some fresh air, staying near the office.

Those who have read up on the life of Vladimir Putin may have heard tales of entire cities hidden underground - and maybe there’s some truth to that in Russia. But Ukraine’s Facility No.1, once built to protect Communist party leadership in the event of a nuclear strike, turned out to have very modest living facilities.

"The rooms - bedrooms and work rooms - are small. They’re all very small, everything is minimalist, they’re nothing special. And everything is as Soviet as possible," says Deputy Prime Minister Kubrakov. 

"There are offices for two, three or four people to work in at the same time. The bedrooms also vary, holding either one, two or three people."

Zelenskyy's office was no different from the others. Davyd Arakhamia recalls:

"Zelenskyy lived in very poor conditions, especially for a president.

There was a five-person office with a rectangular table, almost always full. And the president slept in a corner cramped enough that I felt bad for him. I said ‘Let’s change this’ - our accommodations in the bunker were [surprisingly] more spacious than the President’s. Conditions were spartan, to say the least."

The presidential suite’s only perk was the private shower, but it wasn’t private for long. 

"The president had a small shower reserved for his use. But the taboo was soon broken and others began using the presidential shower, because the shared shower in the corridor was considered unsatisfactory," Arakhamiia recalls.

"When I arrived, we no longer had any rooms to ourselves, because Podoliak had occupied Stefanchuk's room [intended for the parliamentary leadership – UP]. And I remember living with Vice Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk – we had two bunk beds in a small barracks. I don't know how big it was, maybe 11-12 square metres.

Podoliak’s assumed room had its own toilet; ours was in the corridor next to all of the offices. This led to a lot of… ‘class hatred’, if you will, because he took Stefanchuk’s office (he laughs). We couldn’t exactly evict him, given the circumstances… I tried to tactfully say that this was parliamentary property and that he should leave. But…"

Meanwhile, Stefanchuk, the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, whose room Podoliak occupied, had to seek shelter in various locations around the capital. By agreement with Zelenskyy, the Speaker of the Parliament and the President were never in the same place at the same time, so that if one of them was killed, the other could take control of the nation.

So while Zelenskyy and his team were protected by concrete and soil, Stefanchuk had to be "creative" when it came to finding protection.

"We did the ‘Kyiv shuffle’ for a month. Those guys will know what I mean (he nods to the guards – UP). Every day we changed locations, spending nights with random people in different places, but always remaining close enough to reach Kyiv," Stefanchuk recalls.

Whilst the Speaker was learning to work from various random "offices", including a goat farm, a routine would gradually develop in the bunker.

The early days were an adrenaline rush for everyone. Unending negotiations, work meetings, calls and staff meetings punctuated here and there by a few hours of sleep at a time blurred together. As one bunker resident said, "The first three days are all one memory; it is simply impossible to tease out what [individual events] happened and when."

For example, nobody could agree on when an improvised gym was set up in the corridor of the government bunker.

Oleksii Reznikov recalls: 

"We met with the president on 24 February, in his quarters, obviously. And then I would visit him in the bunker every day.

What I liked about his bunker was that the guys already had all of this sports equipment set up… Maybe it was there before, I don’t know. There were pull-up bars, a small barbell and kettlebells so the men from the State Guard could train. I was thinking ‘Cool, everything’s alright - life goes on!’"

"Those dry rations were bad food. We’ve all gained 10-12 kg [22-26 lb], I’ve put on 15 or 16 kg [33-35 lb, over two stone] eating them," David Arakhamiia recalls. 

"And then Podoliak and I remembered that Kyrylo Tymoshenko [then Deputy Head of the President's Office] had a fridge full of good wine in his office. And we went to ‘loot’ it. It was nighttime. I noticed how the Presidential Office Building looked at night, lit by floodlights... It looked like something out of a horror movie, you know? Everything was covered with sandbags. We were making our way through when we stepped on a State Guard member - we apologised. Because all of the corridors were cut off from the grid, we relied on the flashlights on our phones...

The wine was absolutely delicious… You know the feeling, to be nervous and bored [for ages]… and then [finally] find some wine. It was like our little celebration."

Such brief tastes of freedom became possible a few days after the invasion. On the very first day, Zelenskyy's small office in the bunker was constantly crowded with people. It has to be said that there were a lot of people for such a top secret facility.

Immediately after the meeting the heads of the factions, Arakhamiia, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, and head of the President’s Office Andrii Yermak went down to the shelter with Zelenskyy. The prime minister's right-hand man Oleh Nemchinov, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk, and Yermak's deputies Andrii Sybiha and Roman Mashovets were there too.

As time passed, more and more visitors would come down to see Zelenskyy. Some of them stayed with the president for a long time, which was incredibly annoying for his bodyguards.

"We lived in relative isolation. I remember that when someone came, it was a big event, although the security would interfere all the time. I didn't want too many people to even be aware of this facility’s existence," Arakhamiia recalls.

However, despite the security guards' wishes, the president’s bunker gradually began to look more like a location from "The Mitten" (a Ukrainian fairy tale in which a lot of animals wanted to live in a little mitten) than a top secret facility. Oleksandr Kubrakov recalls:

"We came to Zelenskyy's bunker. Well, it was already quite late. [It was] me, [MP] Mustafa Nayyem, Deputy Minister Yurii Vaskov and Oleksandr Kamyshin [then head of national railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia – UP]. The guards told the guys to wait. I said: ‘I'll be back in half an hour.’ But I went in there and stayed for about two to two and a half hours, because the president had one negotiation after another: Macron called him, then Duda, and then someone else – on WhatsApp. And I saw how intense it was, and I said: ‘Listen, my guys are waiting for me there.’ He said: ‘So tell them to come over here.’ 

So we asked them to come, then we talked, and then the prime minister returned from some negotiations, and Andrii Borysovych [Yermak – UP] arrived. Zelenskyy said: ‘So, let's all stay here.’ And this was some kind of meeting room... ‘Stay, you will work from here.’"

While the Armed Forces of Ukraine were coordinating defensive operations and fighting their first battles against the Russian army, the president and his team had many urgent issues to resolve. They had to ensure that the state would continue to function in the face of the invasion, provide everything the Armed Forces needed, obtain international support, and convince the leaders of other countries that Ukraine was resilient enough to not fall in two or three days. 

"In the first few days, there was a lot of fussing about; there were no properly organised, structured processes at all," Davyd Arakhamiia recalls. 

"The bunker is a classified facility, so we can't disclose any major details right now. But there are sectors there - in theory. In practice, nobody paid any heed to the sector system, because everyone was running to see each other, reporting to each other, and so on. There are special communications, video communications, mobile communications, and so on. At first, information went through all possible channels. Later, the normal security protocols were once again obeyed.

I remember that there were a lot of international calls, and I was always itching to jump in, to say something, to participate somehow, because some world leaders... 

…Disappointed us. Almost all of them did. [We were in] a very weak position; everyone was afraid of Putin. Everyone who called. And the more often they called, the more we realised that they were just afraid [to supply powerful weapons right away, fearing uncontrolled escalation by Russia]. It seems to me that one of the main things the war achieved is making [the leaders] themselves no longer afraid of Putin [going scorched earth over proportionate responses]. This is very important if the current world order is to continue to exist."

Zelenskyy was in constant communication with another bunker, where Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi and his generals were commanding the country's defence.

Several of UP's sources were also in Zaluzhnyi's military bunker too. According to Davyd Arakhamia, the Armed Forces chief's safe house is much smaller than the presidential one and isn’t a place anybody would want to shelter for an extended period.

"I visited Valerii Fedorovych. But I didn’t have much time to feel the special atmosphere. You need to live there for a day or two to understand what it’s like.

The presidential bunker, also known as Facility No. 1, is a permanent facility. It’s a capital asset, you know, whereas over there [at the Commander-in-Chief's], it’s more of a temporary facility."

Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov, who was staying in Zaluzhnyi's bunker, said that there are many protected command points like his and Zaluzhnyi's across the country.

"Valerii Zaluzhnyi and I officially have a network of offices across the country. There are different military command posts which we can work from if necessary. We had a discussion with him to ensure that in an emergency, we would know where we were moving, and be on the same page regarding the point or points we would meet at. At every command post, there is always an office shared by the minister and commander-in-chief, a space that can serve as a reception area, a work room, a small recreation room and a bathroom."

Even though the network of protected bunkers, which do not only serve the Armed Forces, is quite extensive, it will have to be completely rebuilt and maybe even relocated after the victory over Russia. Oleksii Reznikov explains:

"We had instructions on what to do if a full-scale war started. The instructions specified that all of the ministries had to have their own command posts. All of them, even the Ministry of Sport and the Ministry of Culture. Where do you think the majority of our ministries’ backup command posts were located? In Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Sumy Oblasts. This is because in Soviet times the threat was expected to arise from the West. The ‘brotherly Russian nation’ was no threat. So all the command posts were right in the path of the invading forces.

This is why we need to make new decisions nowadays and build new command posts for each ministry in other cities."

On 24 February, Reznikov was supposed to go down to Zaluzhnyi's command post and manage things from there, but didn’t in the end.

"I’d seen my place in the bunker before that – they showed it to me when I came to the office. But I only went down there after three days, as far as I remember. During the first three days, I was migrating all over Kyiv," the defence minister recalls.

Reznikov, like Speaker Stefanchuk, had to move to a different location in or near the city of Kyiv every night. He mostly paid "surprise visits" to the homes of his friends who had left the country on the day of the invasion:

"I didn’t spend two nights in a row in the same place. I had the opportunity to go home once every three or four days, get some clean clothes, feed the cat, give it some cat food and water. I spent each night at a new location, at my friends’ places, without warning. I’d analyse where I was and when I would be free, and I’d tell my friend: ‘I’m coming to your place.’ And everyone welcomed me. Even friends who had gone and who had large families. I knew where the key was hidden. I’d go to their place, open their door and spend the night there.

It was apartments, dachas, whatever…even garages. I spent a few days in the bunker as well. But I hated it there, so I got out quickly. I probably only spent two nights there."

The accomodations at his friends’ places sometimes surprised the Ukrainian defence minister, with luxuries that the Soviet command posts definitely did lacked – such as a spa room in the sauna:

"My friend gave me instructions on how I could warm it up. I went to the sauna to get warm, to at least detox a bit and then have some rest. So, I was in the sauna and suddenly I got a text from my waiting room saying the Australian Defence Minister had agreed to talk to me in 15 minutes – he was flying, on his way somewhere, and was ready to talk. I said: ‘Okay.’ I took off my sauna hat, still wearing felt boots and a dressing gown, and put my fleece jacket on over it – the jacket has my last name and position on a velcro label. And that’s how I looked as I skyped the minister."

When Reznikov needed to visit his office down in the bunker, he made an effort to not greet Commander Zaluzhnyi and his team empty-handed.

"I started taking some fresh peppers and tomatoes with me, and I’d call Zaluzhnyi to let him know: ‘Mr Zaluzhnyi, I’ve brought some fresh food.’ And I’d bring it to the bunker. Or I’d say: ‘Come to my office.’ He’d say: ‘Wow, fresh air!’ I’d invite him to have some coffee. I was in my office above them, and they were down in the bunker. 

I know for sure that Zaluzhnyi, Moisiuk [who is Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces], and Shaptala [Chief of the General Staff] visited me during this time".

If Zaluzhnyi needed anything, the president could connect him with someone from his team. On the evening of 24 February, Zelenskyy called Kubrakov and asked if he had Zaluzhnyi's phone number.

"‘No, I don’t,’ I replied. ‘I only worked with Shaptala before the war.’ He then said: ‘You’re going to get a text with a number; they need to send a brigade from Lviv Oblast to Kyiv Oblast urgently. Talk to Zaluzhnyi and explain the timeframe to him and me.’ I called Zaluzhnyi and explained the situation. Then I called the president and told him what Zalushnyi had said, to which he replied ‘No, that’s too late, we need it 4-5 hours sooner.’ So I called Zaluzhnyi again. But we managed to sort everything out eventually."

Kubrakov is now convinced that isolating the top leadership of Ukraine and concentrating it in one place might have been decisive for the success of the resistance.

"[This is] because a lot of decisions about providing troops with this or that, about the subordination of some bodies, or some military tasks – all of this could happen very quickly, in one office. A government meeting was held twice a day: morning and evening. And all the agreements and decisions were being handled very quickly. I think we’ve even gone backwards since then. The level of bureaucracy regarding many issues is even higher than before the war.

In the first few days of the war, decisions were made right away – no one gave them a second thought; we just rushed forward. [The military was provided] with everything [they] needed. Everyone understood the risks, especially near Kyiv. I’ve seen the statistics: [the Russians – ed.] were already on [the west] bank of the Dnipro River near Fastiv, and on the [east] bank near Brovary… And it occurred to me that all [they had] left [to seize] was the Kyiv-Odesa highway! And this made you want to help the military even more: ‘Guys, what else do you need? Is there anything, or anyone, we can send over to you?’ Because I felt so bad about it."

International cooperation was faster as well, Kubrakov recalls:

"You’d text a minister in the UK, and he’d send you the number of the CEO of BP, the CEO of Shell. The American embassy would send you [the number of] the CEO of Exxon. And you’d call them right from the bunker: ‘We need fuel.’ ‘Yeah, wait a sec, we’re on it,’ and so on. That’s how [easy] it was."

One of the key issues left unresolved was how to contact Russia and understand what it actually wanted.

"We did not understand the whole ‘denazification’ thing, or any of the other incomprehensible terms Putin used in his video address," recalls Arakhamiia, who later became the main negotiator with Russia for the next few months. "Nobody really understood what [he] actually meant [by that]."

Arakhamiia recalled that the first opportunity to find out what the Russians wanted appeared when Alexander Lukashenko, self-proclaimed President of Belarus, put himself forward as a negotiator with Kyiv. Even though convoys of military equipment were moving towards Kyiv from Belarusian territory, his offer was accepted.

"It was 24 or 25 February, I think. Yevhen Shevchenko, a notorious member of the Ukrainian Parliament with ties to Lukashenko, somehow got in touch with him and forwarded the call to my phone through Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence Chief Budanov. Lukashenko called me via WhatsApp. The president refused to talk to him, but I convinced him otherwise: ‘I’ll put him on speaker so we can at least hear [what he wanted to say], because they’re conducting the offensive from that direction’. We just wanted answers; [and thought that] he might have been intending to disclose valuable information."

It was during that conversation that Ukraine’s leadership first made an agreement to meet with the Russians.

The delegation was put together relatively quickly, its members selected from those in the bunker who were available and had preferably had some contact with Belarusians or Russians before the invasion. Davyd Arakhamiia explains.

"Podoliak knew the late Belarusian foreign minister Vladimir Makei from their Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He somehow made connections in Belarus a long time ago. He had been deported back then, I think. And he says: ‘I know this Makei guy.’ I say: ‘Come with us then, because you have at least one personal contact.’ Reznikov knew Russian ambassador to Belarus Gryzlov from the Minsk Process. As to why I was chosen, it wasn’t really discussed. Well, they called me on my phone [informing me I was going], so we just went, and that was that. There were no coordinated plans to form a delegation; we just didn’t have time. How could we call the person at the Foreign Ministry we were [ordinarily] supposed to call [to handle the formation] if we didn’t even know where the ministry’s members were at the time? We gathered those around us and just went."

Those who happened to be nearby at the time did as much work as they could. No matter what kind of personal relationships these people had had before, the first few days of the Russian invasion separated true friends from foes.

It was then that something you might call "bunker brotherhood" was born in the cramped, fortified command posts of Kyiv.

"I didn’t feel it back then, I only realised it later," Davyd Arakhamiia recalls. "It’s a normal quirk of human nature: when someone is prepared to die with you - and isn’t just saying that, but really means it - that resonates with you.

That’s what Denys Monastyrskyi, the [former] Minister of Internal Affairs, always told me. Two top officials stayed with him. He said: ‘They will always be with me, because they were willing to die with me. I have a moral obligation to them.’"

Oleksandr Kubrakov shares similar feelings:

"I understand - or at least try to tell myself - that the only people who were there with me were Mustafa Nayyem [head of the State Agency for Reconstruction and Infrastructure Development] and Yurii Vaskov [Deputy Minister of Infrastructure]. They walked this path with me. I got to know them much better, and they showed their best side. This was great.

As far as relationships in the bunker in general are concerned, they were taken to the next level in every sense, because it was like being in a submarine. Concepts like rank and hierarchy don’t always matter as much; it’s a little different. And some interactions were a lot more sincere, for sure. Even after [the stay in the bunker] there was a period where we could discuss unpleasant matters relatively calmly and openly, but in a sincere manner, in a team and with the president."

On the evening of 24 February, Verkhovna Rada Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk, who had to keep his distance from the president, returned to Parliament. He was harrowed imagining how many historical sites might have been captured by the Russian occupiers…

"We left the Verkhovna Rada that evening. The only thing we took with us was the flag of Independence. We believed those bastards didn’t have the right to take that. That flag travelled with me around the outskirts of Kyiv in a backpack carried by one of us. Now it is back in its rightful place, because we knew for sure that neither the flag nor the Constitution of Ukraine and the Act on State Sovereignty could be captured by the orcs. These were the things we took with us."

As Stefanchuk was leaving the Verkhovna Rada, followed by the sounds of explosions, his American counterpart Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, contacted him.

"It was late in the evening; we took the flag and so on, and went into the garage of the Verkhovna Rada. I had asked my team to contact Pelosi in the morning, but she got in touch with me late in the evening. And it seemed surreal: she called me on my phone, the first time we’d talked without interpreters or any other assistance.

And I said: ‘You know, this is a scary situation. I beg you: kick Congress into high gear. The US Congress and the country as a whole must support Ukraine!’

She replied very calmly: ‘Don’t worry, Mr Speaker, I will do everything in my power. I guarantee the support of the US.’ And right at that moment, there were more explosions…

I said: ‘Excuse me, I have to keep moving, so just do your thing, we’ll definitely meet later.

Or maybe not…’"

Authors: Roman Romaniuk and Fedir Popadiuk
Narrator: Ben McBride
Producer: Alina Poliakova
Co-producer and AI-editor: Dmytro Volkovynskyi

Soundproducers: Yevhenii Klimuk and Oleh Labynskyi

Assistant: Anna Khivrenko
Translators: Yelyzaveta Khodatska, Myroslava Zavadska and Tetiana Buchkovska

Editors: Susan McDonald and Ben McBride